Yes, but honestly the light rail is limited. Right now it runs from Sea-Tac to Westlake. The trains in Seattle are so fragmented and hard to access. Most of the Light Rail stations don't even have park and rides.

We joke around at my work about this, so there's the Sounder Train, the Link Light Rail, the SLUT, the monorail(a novelty, tourist attraction).

But honestly that's 4 trains within a mile. Not connected.... only 2 take the same payment method, Orca card. The SLUT still doesn't take the Orca card. Technically if you have the card on you, its payment if they ever checked, but you cant scan it.

So imagine you're in Auburn or Kent, or some south end city and your job is in north downtown Seattle or Lake Union area. You'd take Sounder train up to King Street station, then walk from that station to the Link Light Rail Station, it terminates at Westlake, then walk from there to the SLUT station across the street, the catch the SLUT to Lake Union.

Worthless, fragmented. I mean I applaud the effort, but seriously 3 trains, 3 types of tracks, where was the coordination to make one overall general train/commuter system for the Tacoma/Seattle/Everette area?

A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP

twisted_steel2 wrote:Worthless, fragmented. I mean I applaud the effort, but seriously 3 trains, 3 types of tracks, where was the coordination to make one overall general train/commuter system for the Tacoma/Seattle/Everette area?

The politicians live in Olympia and don't care about our traffic woes. Plus, you know, they want 100% of the population to ride their bicycles to work and not kill our planet by driving around in those awful automobiles.

For me, there's LA and there's everywhere else when it comes to bad traffic. Admittedly I have not driven in Honolulu but I have done so in Frisco, San Jose, San Diego, Seattle and Portland. LA is in a league of its own.

Miami might give L.A. a run for its money; at least, in the late 80s. My mom worked 2.0 miles from where we lived, and it took her 45-50 minutes to drive there every single day. Not sure if it's still that bad; some cities actually do things to improve their flippin' traffic. Not Seattle, though.

Certain parts of LA are and have been bad for decades. Actually, the traffic here doesn't seem any different than Seattle which I lived in for 32 years up to 2008. It all sucks, in fact, any big city worldwide is the same. Shitty.

L.A. is horrible. D.C.-Baltimore is a friggin' nightmare. Seattle's bad, especially so compared to the rest of the country, which is mostly Podunk. The expansion of I-405 should help things a lot, but that won't be for a couple more years. And if they fix areas like the Renton curve and the I-5 side heading south to Seattle from the split, it would be immensely better.

World Champion Seattle Seahawks football. It's an addiction, and there is no cure.Les Norton - gone but never forgotten. Rest in blue and green peace, my friend.

It's also the little things....like, let's say there is a Mariners game, or a Sounders game, or a Seahawks game on a weeknight downtown. They have express lanes going from Bellevue to Seattle on I-90.

Normally the express lanes are open going East out of Seattle, the logic being that most people work in Seattle(slightly flawed these days) so more people are going that way. Yet, when there is a sporting event/concert/whatever, where tens of thousands more people are heading into Seattle. They don't change a damn thing. The light rail/SLUT/Sounder example is another good one. There is no cohesiveness of thought, or any thought for that matter.

Roland, I remember ten years ago police saying they were going to ticket people for "obstructing the flow of traffic" because of their terrible merging behavior. Sadly, I have never seen it happen, the insanity continues.

You know LA traffic sucks when something goes wrong. If everything is perfect its not bad. Plus Californians are much better drivers than thevrest of the country. Its fact people. The issue is its everywhere. 404 to 101 yo 10 then merge to 605 then the 5 to the 210 off on the 10 off ramp to the 22. You get it.Seattle is two small freeways that are basically parking lots every day with no room to expand and ever get better.

The idiots designed the freeways to be parking lots. The West bound I-90 dumps into the 5 right as the two left lanes of the 5 merge due to the Yesler off ramp that gets off on the LEFT side...Brilliant. So, you have 5 lanes going into 3 with a whole other freeway joining in. And that is just ONE spot.

twisted_steel2 wrote:Worthless, fragmented. I mean I applaud the effort, but seriously 3 trains, 3 types of tracks, where was the coordination to make one overall general train/commuter system for the Tacoma/Seattle/Everette area?

The politicians live in Olympia and don't care about our traffic woes. Plus, you know, they want 100% of the population to ride their bicycles to work and not kill our planet by driving around in those awful automobiles.

Sad, but true. This problem though should have been dealt with 60 years ago, but the politicians then lacked ANY foresight! Many subway or city rail systems in this country were built when our grandparents were children or before.

Largent80 wrote:The idiots designed the freeways to be parking lots. The West bound I-90 dumps into the 5 right as the two left lanes of the 5 merge due to the Yesler off ramp that gets off on the LEFT side...Brilliant. So, you have 5 lanes going into 3 with a whole other freeway joining in. And that is just ONE spot.

Yes, I've never gotten the design of that choke point and how it never has been fixed!

twisted_steel2 wrote:Worthless, fragmented. I mean I applaud the effort, but seriously 3 trains, 3 types of tracks, where was the coordination to make one overall general train/commuter system for the Tacoma/Seattle/Everette area?

The politicians live in Olympia and don't care about our traffic woes. Plus, you know, they want 100% of the population to ride their bicycles to work and not kill our planet by driving around in those awful automobiles.

Sad, but true. This problem though should have been dealt with 60 years ago, but the politicians then lacked ANY foresight! Many subway or city rail systems in this country were built when our grandparents were children or before.

Seattle used to have trolley's all over, as did LA. But they were torn up to make way for the 'modern car'.

LA still has underground train stations and tracks that were barely used. In the old show Cities of the Underground, he got to see them, some of them are still there.

The problem was they were privately owned and the auto industry started buying up train companies and then would close them down to kill the competition. True story.

A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP

RolandDeschain wrote:[quote="twisted_steel2"]Worthless, fragmented. I mean I applaud the effort, but seriously 3 trains, 3 types of tracks, where was the coordination to make one overall general train/commuter system for the Tacoma/Seattle/Everette area?

The politicians live in Olympia and don't care about our traffic woes. Plus, you know, they want 100% of the population to ride their bicycles to work and not kill our planet by driving around in those awful automobiles.

Sad, but true. This problem though should have been dealt with 60 years ago, but the politicians then lacked ANY foresight! Many subway or city rail systems in this country were built when our grandparents were children or before.

Seattle used to have trolley's all over, as did LA. But they were torn up to make way for the 'modern car'.

LA still has underground train stations and tracks that were barely used. In the old show Cities of the Underground, he got to see them, some of them are still there.

The problem was they were privately owned and the auto industry started buying up train companies and then would close them down to kill the competition. True story.[/quote]

That is 100% fact. The current LA public transportation stinks simply because LA is so spread out.